Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 16

(1)

“Where the hell are we?” Josh was looking for roadside signs.

His wife Deb was hunched forward using her cell phone’s meager display light to try and read a map. The dome light of their car hadn’t worked in four years. “I think we’re near some town called Black Marsh.”

“Never heard of it. We just passed a sign for a bridge,” he said, looking in the rearview, though behind them everything was black.

“Good, take that. We’ll cross back into Pennsylvania and go through…um, looks like something called Pine Deep.”

“Yeah, that’s that dumb tourist place that’s been on the news. All that Halloween crap.” Josh was getting cranky. The two of them had driven from Erie for a wedding in Ocean City, New Jersey, and had gotten directions off the Internet. So far those directions had failed them three times, and for the last hour they had been Brailling their way through back roads in New Jersey. The little finger of the gas gauge was pointing accusingly at E, needling Josh for not filling up when he had the chance “They ought to have a gas station or two. Being, you know, a tourist place and all.”

Josh said nothing.

“If not…we have Triple-A.”

Josh hadn’t renewed the AAA membership and didn’t want to have to tell her, so he just concentrated on the road. Their car, a battered Jeep Cherokee that had seen better decades, rolled onto the heavy timbers of the bridge and rattled across the Delaware River into the borough of Pine Deep. In the darkness of the cab, both Deb and Josh Meyers shivered. Neither noticed the other do so. It was an instinctive reaction, a trembling as if in the face of a chill wind, but their windows were rolled up and though set on low the Jeep’s heater was on.

They drove on, climbing up to the tops of the long hills and then dropping down the other sides, plunging into darkness, chasing the spill of the Jeep’s headlights. At the top of a particularly steep hill, just as the Jeep pitched toward the drop, Deb said, “Look, there’s a cop car.”

“Finally!”

They descended the hill toward a police cruiser parked on the shoulder, the light bar lit but not flashing—the way a lot of small-town cops did when writing reports or just making their presence known. As the Jeep coasted toward the cruiser, they could see the officer in silhouette, bent down over something, apparently writing on a pad. Josh tooted the horn, a single short beep, as he slowed to a stop. The cop didn’t look up.

“Gimme the map,” Josh said, “and wait here. I’ll see what he says.” He jerked open the door, stepped out into the cold air, hunched in to the wind and jog-walked over to the cruiser. “Hello? Uh…excuse me? Officer?”

The cop still sat with his head bent over a writing tablet. From the angle at which he sat, and with the masking presence of the man’s uniform hat, Josh could not see the cop’s features.

“Officer…?”

There was no movement, and Josh began to wonder if the cop was sound asleep. Tentatively he reached out and tapped the closed window. Nothing.

He tried again, and again called, “Officer? I need to get some directions.”

The officer’s head moved slightly. Josh rapped on the glass again. Like most people he was afraid of cops, not because he had done anything at all illegal, but just because he was Joe Public and cops were cops. His action, just simply wanting to know directions to a gas station, was deferential, even apologetic. Even the way he tapped on the glass implied apology for disturbing the officer.

“Please, can you tell me where I can find a gas station?”

The cop’s head came up, but he was facing away from Josh, appearing to stare out the window into darkness. The officer slowly held up a hand, one finger extended in a mild command for Josh to wait. The officer set down his notebook and, though still looking in the other direction, jerked the door handle open.

Josh stepped back from the door and watched the cop get out. He was frowning. The cop was getting out of the car in a very strange fashion. He would not turn his face toward Josh, so in a way he actually bent forward and backed out of the car. His motions were jerky, peculiar, as if he was unused to moving his own body. As his head cleared the door frame, the hat caught on the edge and was swept from his head as he straightened. The hat fluttered into the car and the cop made no move to retrieve it. The officer’s hair was tangled and unkempt, and there appeared to be something dark and moist clotted into the tangle at the back of his head. The red and blue dome lights made nonsense of colors, but Josh had the thought that it could be blood glistening on the back of the cop’s head.

Josh’s frown deepened, and he was caught between the sudden rush of ordinary concern and a fearful uncertainty that rooted him to the spot. Then it came to him. The cop must have been in some kind of accident. Maybe he banged his head and that’s why he was so unresponsive and groggy. Josh could see no damage to the car, but maybe the whole other side of the car was punched in.

“Officer…are you all right?”

The cop lost balance for a moment and had to reach out and grab the door frame to keep from falling. Josh automatically reached out with both hands to support him, catching him by the elbow and under the armpit.

“Jesus! You’re hurt. What happened?”

The cop steadied himself, and even lifted one hand to wave Josh back.

“Officer? Hey…you okay?”

“I’ll…” the cop began. His voice was thick and distorted. “I’ll…be…”

“Are you hurt?”

“I’ll…be…fine. Just…give me a moment.” He barely whispered the words.

Josh looked over his shoulder to where Deb was peering at him through the windshield. She made a questioning gesture and he shrugged, shaking his head.

“Um,” Josh said uncertainly, “look…if you’re hurt maybe I can help.” He bent close, saw something dark and glistening on the cop’s face. “Jeez, you’re bleeding!”

Josh put his hand on the officer’s shoulder and gently pulled, trying to turn the man, wanting to see how badly the officer was injured. His first-aid knowledge was on a purely “get a Band-Aid” or “put ice on it” level. But what if this guy had a concussion? What if he was really hurt? The patrol car didn’t look damaged, but maybe he hit something, a deer perhaps, and then cracked his head on the steering wheel. It seemed like the only likely answer. Josh didn’t know if he would be able to work a police microphone to ask for help. He pulled on the cop’s shoulder, and then hesitated. The officer was trembling, his big body shaking spasmodically. Was he…crying?

Jesus, he thought, the poor guy.

He pulled on the shoulder as gently as he could, but still firmly enough to turn the cop. The man resisted with surprising strength. “Let me help,” Josh said softly. “C’mon, let me see…”

“You…want to see?” the officer said, and Josh felt a chill race up and down his spine. As the cop had spoken, it had become clear he wasn’t crying at all.

He was laughing.

Josh’s hand faltered and he opened his mouth to say something; he was confused, trying to understand. The cop turned then. Not with Josh’s assistance, but with his own effort. It was fast—so fast that all Josh saw was a blur of gray cotton, a brief glint of headlights on a gold wristwatch, the hot red flash of a high school ring, and then Josh felt the officer’s white hand clamp around his throat. The pressure was instant and enormous, and Josh felt himself rising to his toes, then beyond all sanity he felt the ground dropping away under his shoes. Even as it was happening the part of his mind that required logic was saying, That can’t be right. His feet kicked in empty space, and yet the cop still held him, still maintained that crushing grip on his throat. Josh tried to scream. The glare from the Jeep’s driving lights splashed against the cop’s face, showing his features at last and with stark clarity illuminating horror.

The officer’s eyes were a furious red set in dark pits of bruised flesh. His mouth was a gaping, laughing impossibility of wicked white teeth. His throat was a ragged ruin caked with blood.

Darkness swarmed around Josh; his senses became confused. He thought he saw two more figures rush out of the darkness beneath the trees that lined the side of the road. His mind was closing down and all that he could be sure of was a vagueness of white faces and empty eyes, and beneath the roaring in his ears he thought he heard a desperate, hungry moaning. These shapes did not come to rescue him, nor did they come to hurt him—they moved away from the police cruiser, toward the Jeep. Dimly, distantly he heard Deb yelling his name, and then she began screaming in long inarticulate wails. She jammed her hands against the horn and the blare rose like a banshee.

Josh tried to call her name, tried to reach for her, but he could feel his own strength fading away. He saw the figures tear open the car doors, saw the shapes come at Deb from both sides. They grabbed her arms and for a moment Josh’s darkening brain thought that the attackers were playing a kids’ game. Tug-of-war. And then Deb’s scream rose to a supersonic shriek as the monsters tore her apart. Her blood splashed against the inside of the windshield and painted it an opaque red-black. Deb’s screams gurgled to a wet nothing and all Josh could hear was a sound like lions tearing apart a zebra with their teeth.

The hand holding him gave a tighter squeeze and Josh saw, with fading vision and awareness, the name tag on the cop’s uniform: D. MCVEY. It meant nothing to him except that it was the last thing he ever saw before the pain in his throat blossomed into a dripping darkness tinged with scarlet.

(2)

Vic’s cell phone rang and he picked it up from where it lay on a table, saw that the screen display said POLK, and flipped it open. “Yeah?”

“Back door.”

Without comment Vic flipped the phone shut and went to open the door, pausing only long enough to peer through the spy hole to confirm that it was Polk, and that he was alone.

“Hope this ain’t a social call, Jimmy.”

Licking his lips nervously, Polk held up a finger and then retreated to his parked car, which was angled in toward the garage door, and removed a large cardboard box from the trunk. Vic noted that Polk had used enough common sense to remove the bulb from the trunk light, and decided that was worth some Brownie points. Polk handed the box to Vic and in a hushed voice said, “Detonators, rolls of fuse wire, and some timers. Everything you asked for, plus I got a couple extra of each.”

Nodding in appreciation, Vic turned and set the box inside the door. He did not invite Polk in. Turning back, he said, “And the dynamite?”

“I’ll have it next week, but I don’t want to bring it here. I can meet you somewhere out of town, if that’s okay.”

“Yeah, that’s good. Keep your cell handy and once you get it, give me a call. I’ll tell you where and when to meet.”

“Okay.”

Polk’s face was shining with sweat despite the chill, and he kept licking his lips in a way that reminded Vic of a nervous Chihuahua. If he’d had a dog biscuit he would have bet he could have made Polk sit up and beg.

“Kenny said he needed seventy-five percent up front before he turns over the stuff, though, and the rest on delivery.”

“Fair enough,” Vic said. “Wait here.” He left Polk standing outside in the cold darkness while he went back into his den and to a wall safe that was behind a framed photo of Heinrich Himmler, punched in a code, and when the door popped open he took out several stacks of bills that had been bundled into five-thousand-dollar bricks and secured with green rubber bands. He counted out two hundred thousand and dumped the bills into a zippered vinyl bag that read STRIKE IT BIG AT PINELANDS LANES. As an afterthought he took more bricks of bundled twenties and carried them and the bag back outside. Handing off the bag, he said, “This is for your cousin Kenny. And this,” he added, holding out the ten grand, “is for you.”

Polk looked at it narrowly as if expected some kind of nasty trick. “Why?”

“Because you’re doing your job, Jimmy-my-boy. Unless you don’t want it?” Vic pretended to pull it back, but Polk snatched at it, catching one bundle of five thousand and causing the other to fall. He bent down and picked it up off the ground from in front of Vic’s feet and as he rose he unzipped his jacket and stuffed the money inside.

“Now, what do you say?” Vic asked mildly.

“Um…thanks, Vic.”

“Good dog,” Vic said, and turned and went back inside.

(3)

Ruger absently wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, caught sight of the bright-red smear and licked it off, savoring the taste. Blood was so much sweeter when it was still fresh, before the cells thickened and died. After that the taste was drab, like sucking on wet cardboard. He’d known that even before the change, and now he felt like a connoisseur.

On the ground, the young woman moaned, struggling to turn over, fighting to find a thread of breath amid the smashed debris of her throat. Red bubbles formed on her lips and popped, staining her face with tiny misty droplets. She lifted a fluttering hand to her throat, touching with featherlight fingers the irregular line of blood-drenched skin that should have been smooth. Blood seeped in sluggish pulses; her life pushed out of her with each fading beat of her heart.

Ruger squatted down and looked at her. The fluttering hand entertained him; it reminded him of a hummingbird, and he smiled. He reached out and scooped another fingerful of blood from her throat, licking it the way a kid would lick a finger’s worth of cookie batter.

“Please…” the woman whispered and just managing that single word cost her breath she didn’t have left to spend. Ruger smiled and brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. She had pretty eyes—honey brown with gold flecks. Even now, even after all that he’d done to her, her eyes still held a glimmer of innocent hope, as if he could take it all back, make it all better again. “Please,” she said again and even tried to give him a trembling, hopeful smile.

Karl Ruger looked into those brown eyes and gave her a smile of his own, warm, encouraging, and he could see her spirit rise toward it, her hope blossoming as he pressed his fingers to her throat, closing the wound.

“H…help me…” she whispered in what was left of her voice.

He bent close so that his lips were inches from hers. His black eyes filled her vision. “Fuck you, bitch,” he murmured, and then curled his fingers and tore her throat apart.

The last of her spilled out with her blood.

Ruger bent closer still and licked up that last pulse of blood. That final moment of life was as precious as the first beat of an infant’s heart, and it was his to own forever.

He rose, deeply satisfied, powerfully aroused.

Around him there was still some movement, though all of the desperate scrambling was done. A final scream tore through the night but it was cut off and ended with a gurgle, overlapped by someone’s laughter. Six cars were parked in the clearing at Passion Pit on Dark Hollow Road, each tucked under sheltering trees; one old 1980s-style custom van was side-on to Ruger, the driver’s door open and a man’s body, naked from the waist down, lay with head and shoulders hanging limp, arms wide, the backs of the hands touching the ground. The air was heavy with the coppery scent of blood, and Ruger felt intoxicated. Everywhere he looked there was young flesh, much of it bared to the inspection of the moonlight, white skin and red blood and wide, empty eyes. Ruger was hard as a rock.

The young woman and her date had provided some genuine entertainment. The man was stretched across the hood of the Lexus. His fly was open and his limp penis poked like a thick white grub through the folds of his trousers. The dead woman’s blouse was unbuttoned, her white bra pushed up; she wore no panties. Ruger had watched from the shadows as the young couple fumbled in the little shell of the car. It was a real kick to watch the man cajole her into going down on him, sometimes pleading, sometimes browbeating her. It jazzed Ruger to hear the man’s almost feminine shriek as he had come in her mouth, his hands clamped down on the back of her head, ignoring her struggles and gagging coughs. It had been obvious to Ruger that it was the young woman’s first foray into oral sex, and she hadn’t been all that fond of the experience. Ruger had known women who had been spoiled for it forever because some tough guy had held her head down with strong fingers, all the time promising he wouldn’t come in her mouth. Hell, Ruger had done it himself enough times, loving the struggle, loving the fact that the blow job he was getting would be the last one the woman would probably ever willingly give. It made such events rare and special for him, especially the knowledge that he could actually reach into a woman’s mind and leave his own mark, a scar that could never be erased. That was a rush better than the resulting orgasm.

The young woman—teenager actually—he’d watched had been going through that process, and while it was fun to watch, it wasn’t Ruger himself who was leaving the mark but some pimple-faced young jock who was only getting some because he had his daddy’s fancy car. Ruger couldn’t just sit by forever and let the bozo have all the fun. So, just as the jock came, Ruger rose up beside the car and yanked the door open and the jock fell halfway out. Ruger caught him by the hair and jerked him the rest of the way out of the car, handing him back to the hungry ones behind him. The twins and the Carby kids. They didn’t go for the kill right away—they beat the living shit out of him first. Just for fun.

This was not the first hunt for the Carbys, Jilly and Tyler, whose farm had been overrun by Ruger’s first recruits two weeks ago, or for the twins Demian and Adrian, who had been turned a few days later. Each of them had been involved in group hunts and solo kills, but there was always something new to learn from Ruger. Everyone worshipped Ruger. He was like a rock star to them. The actual Cape May Killer and Ubel Griswold’s cold left hand.

The Carbys had brought along their cousin, Chad, whom they had turned last night, and they wanted him to learn the art of the kill from a kickass bloodletter like Ruger. Over the last few nights Ruger had let all the kids make kills, but more than that he’d let them kick the shit out of the victims. Even the twins, who were just grade-school kids, had been fully blooded on Ruger’s field trips. Now it was Chad’s turn, and Ruger had made him watch as twelve of the youngest members of the Red Wave swept through the Passion Pit, kicking ass, taking lives. Having a grand fucking time of it.

Now all the sweating, huffing, moaning young lovers were dead. Ruger snapped his long, thin fingers, the sound firecracker sharp in the cold air. A dozen faces, pale as the watching moon, turned toward him, expectant and silent.

“Clean it up,” he told them. “No traces.”

They looked disappointed. One of them, one of the newer ones, spoke up. “Why? We can wake them up, get them to clean up their own shit. Why do we have to do it?”

Ruger turned toward Chad and fixed him with the full impact of his stare. “Because I said so, Chad,” he said, inflecting the boy’s name with contempt, smiling like a crocodile, his top row of teeth like a serrated knife.

Chad Carby shrank visibly, but still he held his ground. Some of the others smirked at the speaker’s discomfiture, but Ruger kind of admired the kid’s spunk. It was even okay, in the scheme of things, because this was the way it worked. The alpha teaching the pups how the pack works.

Ruger turned in a slow circle, making brief but scintillating eye contact with each of them. Like a good general he knew how to rally as well as how to chastise, and he laid a cold hand on Chad’s shoulder. “Just be patient, kiddo,” he said with his icy whisper. “A good soldier knows when to go quiet and dark and when to burn the trees. Until Halloween, it’s all about keeping it on the down-low. You with me, pardner?”

“I…guess so,” Chad said, his eyes shifting toward Ruger’s and then falling away.

Ruger pretended to find a drop of blood at the corner of his mouth, dabbed it off, and licked it with a darting tongue. “Tell you boys what we can do,” he said. “Once we clean this shit up…why don’t you wake up the girls first?” He gave Chad a wicked wink, making sure the others saw it, too.

They all laughed, low and mean and hungry.

“Halloween’s coming soon, kids,” he said, and then nodded to Chad. “You know what Halloween is, don’t you?”

Chad Carby lifted his eyes to meet Ruger’s. “You told us it would be trick or treat.”

Ruger chuckled softly. “Lots of tricks,” he murmured, “and lots of treats.” He gave Chad another quick wink. “Now let’s clean this shit up and have some fun.”

(4)

Vic’s cell rang again and this time the display said GOLUB. He set down the timing switch he’d been tinkering with and flipped it open.

“This had better be important.”

“Vic? Look, we had a bit of problem out here. Karl had me swing by to check on Dixie McVey. He was doing some car stops near the Black Marsh Bridge. Dix had some of the Dead Heads with him and he faked out a couple of tourists. Young couple from Erie, no local ties, at least as far as I can tell.”

“I don’t give a shit. Get to a point or get off the line.”

“Dix did okay—he took out the guy and we’ve already recruited him—but the Dead Heads jumped the schedule and hit the woman.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, they went all George Romero on her.”

Vic sighed. He hated the fact that every jackass in this goddamned town loved to throw pop-culture references around as if it made them cool. Even recruits like Golub. Vic would love to just push the plunger and nuke the whole frigging lot of them. Fanboy assholes. “What did they do?” he asked, though he thought he already knew.

“Well…they kind of ate her.”

“Shit.”

“There’s not enough left to recruit. Tore her arms off, tore her…”

“All right, all right. Son of a bitch.” He rubbed his eyes. “Put McVey on.”

There was a rustle and then McVey spoke. “Hey, boss, sorry for the screwup.” Unlike Golub, who could pass, McVey was a different species of vampire and his teeth had already grown so huge that his voice was muffled by trying to talk around them. Worse than Ruger.

“Where are those assholes now?”

“Dave and I quieted them down, got them sitting in the woods just off the road. We had to cuff them together around a tree.”

“How bad’s the mess?”

“Bad enough, but Dave and I both brought cleanup stuff in our car, like you told us to.”

“I don’t like hearing that you let this get out of hand.” Silence on the other end of the phone. “You understand me?”

“Sure,” McVey said, his voice thick. “But…those Dead Heads are pretty hard to handle. Won’t listen, and sometimes they just go off, y’know? They don’t even drink, not the right way—all they want to do is eat. I’m not even sure they can think, let along take orders—”

“You think you just called 1-800-IGiveAShit? Just clean it up and make damn sure you don’t put a foot wrong again. I don’t want to have to tell you a second time.”

“Yes, sir,” McVey said. The “sir” was a suck-up gambit, but Vic liked it.

“One more thing. Get some body bags and pop a cap in two useless meatheads. Headshots only, and use sound-suppressors. Then bury ’em somewhere quiet. Spread the word about it, too. You step outside of the Plan, you die. Even Dead Heads should be able to process that.” He hung up.

“Shit!” he growled and very nearly hurled his cell phone against the wall.